Hydrogen cell info

Flat Ernie,

You are missing something. It takes X amount of energy to generate hydrogen from water. When you burn this hydrogen in the engine, you get Y amount of energy out. Make sense?

The problem with this entire concept is that it is a negative energy process. That means that X is greater than Y. The difference between X and Y is represented in the heat you observe during the electrolysis process.

What this means is that, even in an ideal world (which your engine is far less than) the energy used to generate the hydrogen is greater than the energy gained from burning the hydrogen. This is a non-sustainable process.

When it comes to fuel mileage, the result is that you are wasting energy by heating up the water in your "cell". You are using more gasoline energy to generate the hydrogen than you are getting out of the hydrogen when you burn it in the engine. You would do better to just skip the hydrogen part all together.

It's really pretty simple. Now, if you generate your hydrogen from some other source (Battery, Wall power, etc) and THEN burn it in your engine, that is a different story. You could very likely make this work out and basically suppliment your gasoline usage with some hydrogen. Whether or not it is worth it would depend on the cost of doing this and the cost of the electricity you were using at home to generate the hydrogen (truth is, it probably would not be) or charge your battery. As a hint, there is a reason that industry generates hydrogen from natural gas, NOT from electrolysis. It takes a LOT of energy and is not cost effective.

So that is a debatable point. What is not a debatable point is that the generation of hydrogen by electrolysis is a negative energy process and cannot sustain itself. You need some other energy input, and you must calculate the cost of that energy when evaluating if the entire process is worth it.

There is a reason we use gasoline in our cars - it is a very energy dense and relatively inexpensive chemical energy source. Hydrogen is less energy dense and, with current technology, much more expensive. Hydrogen is also a lot more difficult to handle safely.